Writer. Reader. Part-time hermit. Lol at my own one-liners. A lot. Blogging about whistling in the dark, writing for the void, living, loving, traveling the mists, and finding joy.

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

Norman Bates

Photo Credit: Norman Bates by Stephanie Karfelt

Once Upon a Time a little girl’s
stupid parents promised to get her a cat if she would move to Iceland. At the
time they promised this, Angel’s tiny fingers were clutching the door jamb of
her lovely house in a sunny land.

“You will
like Iceland,” they lied, “it snows there, all the way up to the windowsills!”(This is a lie, because it actually snows up
to the rooftops in Iceland*.)

Angel wasn’t
buying it, so they threw in the cat deal.

At the SPCA
Angel picked out a kitten with several extra toes on each paw. She felt sorry
for it. She didn’t understand about inbreeding. Neither did she connect the
tiny black and white kitten to its feral mother, yowling and slamming her body
against a nearby cage. Angel named the kitten Oreo, because it was black and
white. (Nor did Angel understand politically incorrect.)

Oreo did
not understand the refrigerator door rule. You know the one. Where a person pushes
the door shut, while walking away, unaware that the kitten scuttled across the
floor to peep inside. He crawled under the couch, where Angel’s stupid parents
assumed he would be transported to kitten heaven. No such luck,
fortunately that did not happen. Instead he darted out demanding blood
sacrifices for the offense, and stealing entire loaves of bread to consume with
primitive growls of joy.

Scary little Oreo, tiny kitten
that he was, got to go outside because he stood at the door and spoke in a deep
man voice and said, “OUT, OUUUUUT, OUUUUUUUUUT,” over and over. Until Angel’s
parents were a little afraid not to allow it. So they allowed it and hoped for
the best, which may not mean what you think it means, but dang if he didn’t
come back. Every time.

It soon
became apparent that the not so sweet little inbred kitten was in fact, a
serial killer. Woodland creatures (and some neighbors) far and wide feared him.
The body count rose, but in the spirit of Hannibal Lector, Oreo did not waste
his victims. Angel averted her eyes to the carnage, but didn’t protest when her
parents renamed her kitten Norman Bates after the dude in Psycho. Norm liked to
greet children at the front door and chase them through the house, he really
liked if they screamed, and gave them plenty of reason to do so. Angel took to
wearing socks on her arms to protect herself. The neighborhood children enjoyed
playing blood-tag with Norman, and no one sued when the cat tagged them out. They
were afraid to. Norm knew where they lived.

Photo Credit: Norman Bates by Stephanie Karfelt

In an
attempt to keep skin on their daughter and her friends, the stupid parents had
the cat declawed, but his nails grew back. Not all twenty-eight of them, but
enough to keep the residents of Iceland on their toes. The plan was to keep
Norm inside after the failed declawing, but the household became afraid to walk
in the dark with the cat inside. Nights were filled with running and screaming
(both feline and human) and rescues where several family members had to pry Norman
off a screaming victim were common. Stray cats tormented from outside, causing
Norman to launch himself against the windows bellowing, “Goooooo
hooooooome!Goooooo!Gooooo!”And one night he woke Angel’s mother by standing on her chest and
speaking in a low reasonable tone, “Let. Me. Ouuuut.”So out he went again, the scourge of the
countryside. So remember this, if you’re ever hiking in Iceland, for the love
of light, wear socks on your arms.

***

*Location may have been altered in the hopes that if Norman
reads this, he won’t know it is about him and come after me. The rest of the
story is true.

Do you have a scary cat story?Or any cat story you’d like to share?An Epic Slinky Dog (the antithesis to Norman)
will be awarded to the best cat tale.

16 comments:

Oh Holy Crow.I just laughed myself to tears sitting in my glass office.Not joking.I laughed so hard I had to stop halfway through to collect myself. Then, when I started again, I made it halfway through the next paragraph before I had to stop again.

Voted for you.I'll come back with a cat story. But first I need to go find a tissue and clean myself up.Then find my mother and make her come read or be read to.

It was night and she was lying in her bed. Hearing a noise, she turned to look at the window. The moon normally shined through, but not tonight. Tonight there was a face. She trembled, but was too afraid to move or scream. She quietly called to her brothers until eventually someone came and flipped her light on.

"There's something outside my window."

He flipped the light off, but the face was gone. Night after night, she peered at her window, all tucked in bed, her covers up to her chin. She never knew when it would appear, but the light always seemed to make it vanish. Until one day...

Spring arrived. And then Summer. Night after night there was nothing but beautiful moonlight filtering through her window. Eventually she began to relax. Days turned to weeks and weeks to months.

Then. It was a hot summer night. Dusk, really. Not quite dark. All the windows were opened to allow the attic fan to do its work. Suddenly, a shadow floated in through the window, across the room, and landed with a thud in her bed. She shrieked. She freaked. She kicked her feet as she felt it crawling between her blanket and sheet.

Her cat pounced and yowled and soon the shadow flew to her closet and landed with a thud.

She got up and turned on the light. The cat sniffed in and around the closet.

There was no sound. There was no smell. There was nothing they could find. Ever. Just the memory of a flying squirrel invading her nights.

Once upon a time there was a beautiful princess kitten called Dragon. She lived in the lap of luxury, all those who met her unable to resist her feline charm. As is true with so many princesses, Dragon was not all there in the brains department. Perched on the top of a chair one day, she caught sight of her tail curling underneath the other side of it. "A foe!" Thought Dragon. "I must defeat it!"Leaning perilously over the back of the chair, Dragon bravely - albeit stupidly - struck out against her own poor tail. Having caught hold of it in both paws, balancing even more precariously on her back two paws, Princess Dragon proceeded to pull on what she took to be the intruding foe. Realising her mistake all too late, she tumbled backwards off the chair, the strength of her tug proving too much for the position she held. Scrambling back up into a more dignified pose, this time on the ground, Princess Dragon began grooming herself to show that the incident left no lasting damage on the tail that was now curled around her.The moral is, not all cats are graceful, and mind is a particularly beautiful idiot:)

The link to where to vote is concealed inside DM Kilgore's name, just hover your mouse over it and click! See how high-tech I've gotten? Awwwwwee, right? Thank you Linnette and Marlena, for asking! I appreciate your support!

I was going to tell you one about a Cute Coworker who couldn't say no to a mewling cat under a car, but if I get to break rules...

I'll tell you about BobbleHead Dog

Once upon a time, my sister and my mother agreed to get a second Chihuahua, each paying half. It was love at first site when they found BobbleHead Dog at the exotic pets store. I was with them. I remember.It was hard not to see him, the lonely Chihuahua with a head twice the size of his tiny puppy body - ears to match.BobbleHead did what all dogs do when they see my mom. Instantly picked her as Alpha and set his heart on going home with us.

Bobblehead went through many names in the beginning - Radar, Ozzy, Tito, Xander (that was my sister's first choice).Finally, I think because he was so low to the ground and squatty and his head was so big, we went with Tank.Tank the BobbleHead weighed 3 lbs. 2 lbs of that resided in his head. Tank's misfortune was his inability to control said head, much like new babies.When leaning down to eat his food, Tanks' back legs would rise up off of the floor, unable to hold himself down. Once, while casually scratching his ear with a back paw, Tank's head dropped him off the side of the bed.But on more than one occasion - and my favorite - Tank had another type of issue:You can't be small, top heavy, and easily frightened. It isn't going to work out for you. Tank particularly didn't like a football mask we had. It bothered him. he liked to jump at it and then scurry away. One evening while playing, I had the mask on the ground and was bopping it back and forth towards Tank, who would attack and jump back accordingly.I slipped, being on my hands and knees, and Football mask went flying at Tank.Terror lighting his eyes, he reared back on to his hind legs just atop the stairs.You see where this is going.Young Bobblehead couldn't get his front feet back to the ground, his head was already sending him backwards.I launched forward, but it was too late to help. Bobblehead rolled backwards, turned in the air, and proceeded to twist down the stairs like a perfectly round tube of paper towels. I dashed down after him and found him at the bottom, shaking his great head, wagging his tiny tail, and smiling cross eyed up at me. It wouldn't be the last time his head sent him for a ride.

Technically and according to the great blogger laws of the universe - there was only one cat story - so the Epic Slinky Dog goes to Abergail and Dragon The Great Tail Slayer.

I have a particular fondness for flying squirrel stories Linnette, and I was leaning towards your tale, then Kelsey showed up with this bobblehead weiner dog, really? That is priceless. Poor, poor Tank. Being a dog, that poor guy must have never had a clue why he toppled over all the time. Bet he figures it happens to everyone. So a special Glitter Globe prize will be awarded to Kelsey and Tank, who really doesn't need a prize so much as a telethon.

I won. I won, I won, I won. The flash fiction contest at The Realm of DMKilgore. Yay me. It almost makes the pitted scars Norman left behind worth it. Who am I kidding? It totally makes it worth it.

The prize was a Starbucks gift card. I went to Iceland* and took Angel out for one of those Yum coffees with foamy milk, whipped cream, and extra caramel on top. We sat in a snowstorm and drank it in The Time Travel Jeep. Wish you could have been there.

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